This invention relates to the fields of baseball fielding gloves/mitts and a method of heating a baseball bat handle during cold weather. When used throughout the remainder of this application, including, but not limited to, in the claims section, “baseball” shall mean both and/or either, the games of baseball or softball.
Baseball fielding gloves are as old as the game itself. Yet many improvements have been made in baseball gloves over these many years as the game itself has become both quicker and harder to play due to technological advances in the construction of both baseballs and baseball bats, and also due to the higher level of fitness, strength and size of today's baseball players. In order to keep up with these subtle, yet ever present changes in the way the game is played, baseball gloves have also needed to evolve.
Along these same lines, it is now also regularly found that kids to adults are playing baseball more and more, including in weather and climates not normally thought to be ideal for the game. For example, it is not uncommon for the weather during Spring training for the professional leagues, and during the professional league's baseball playoffs and World Series to be quite cold. Further, as is often the case when dealing with popular sports, if the professionals are doing something, the colleges, high schools, elementary schools and parents/children will be trying to imitate the professionals. Hence, it is also not uncommon in today's society for children ranging in all ages and for adults to be playing baseball in cold to very cold weather conditions. It would therefore be desirable to have a baseball glove that keeps a player's hands/fingers warm while playing during these cold conditions, as well as a method of keeping the often times very cold baseball bat handle warm.
Over the years, it has been known to heat various types of clothing items, including but not limited to, general activity, play and dress gloves, but no such heating mechanisms are known to exist for baseball fielding gloves/mitts, and no methods of heating a baseball bat are known. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide baseball gloves/mitts with heating elements in order to keep a player's hands warm in the colder weather, and it would be desirable to also provide a method for heating the handle of a baseball bat.